Personal blog
Below you see some posts from my personal blog over at Posterous (a service I can’t recommend enough, by the way). They’re not as well-considered as the ones here, sometimes downright ill-informed – the lighter side, so to speak. I hope you’ll enjoy them nonetheless.
Marieke reading
Made with the fantastic Hipstamatic
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(read more)Want to buy a classic? Why not a new one, then?
Always wanted that classic car, but you were afraid that the maintenance costs might ruin you? Despair no longer, because there are ample opportunities to buy a brand new classic car! Something made this decade but with road safety and handling features well over forty years old! Allow me to present four examples here.
1. The Lada 2105/2107 (Riva). Price: from 4050 Euros
(See picture above) This piece of Russian engineering started life as a Fiat 124 in 1966. And in that guise, it was actually quite a sporty little number. Particularly the 1.6L top model (equipped with a five-speed gearbox) was a remarkable, fast but also very durable car that seemed almost accidentally resistant to rust.
Of course, everything changed when the Russian outfit VAZ started to build it in a licensed version at their plant in Togliatti (named after an Italian communist party leader), and marketed it as the Lada (or VAZ-2101). The first models were optically nearly indistinguishable from their Italian ancestor, but smaller and less powerful engines, diminutive brakes and ill-tempered gear boxes made that it behaved decidedly different.
Its successor, the Lada 2105/2107 (in European markets; Riva in the UK market) introduced few innovations, although the 1990s brought fuel injection. But despite its lack of mechanical sophistication, the Ladas proved to be dependable workhorses (if rather prone to rusting) and became beloved cars in their home country. When their intended successor, the all-new Samara, was introduced next to it in the mid-1980s, the Siberian habit of warming the Ladas' engines up with small fires wreaked predictable havoc with the Samara's plastic engine components. As a consequence of its incredible endurance, the 2105/2107 series is still being produced and sold in Russia. If anything, production is being extended: a factory in Egypt was opened a few years ago, with a second plant opening later in 2010.
2. The Peugeot 504. Price: around 14000 Euros
True, it's not being made any longer. But you can still get yourself a brand new one, provided you want to pick it up in Kenya or Nigeria. Compared to the Lada it is the very symbol of sophistication, but we're still talking about something introduced in 1968. In 1983, production stopped in Europe, but licensed versions were being made in such markets as Argentina, Nigeria, and Kenya up to 2006. Outwardly, little changed during that time, but the interior and the power plant was overhauled a number of times (particularly in the Argentinean version) and the last versions were in fact not so much worse than contemporaneous cars to drive.
3. The Hindustan Ambassador. Price: 10500 Euros
The Ambassador, or 'Amby' as it's affectionally called in India, was a fair bit older than either the Lada or the Peugeot. It's based on the 1956 Morris Oxford III, which, in all honesty, wasn't a great car to begin with. The Amby really motorised a nation, and one of the biggest nations in the world. It fulfilled every conceivable role, from taxi to government limousine, and remained virtually unaltered in all those years, apart from minor cosmetic changes. It's being imported by a firm in Wales and at just over 10,000 euros, it's your best chance to revive the motoring fifties.
4. The Iran Khodro Paykan. Price: 6600 Euros
Reviving anything will not be easy in the Paykan. In fact, staying alive at all may be quite a feat. Made in the country with the world's highest traffic fatality rate, Iran, the Paykan was for years the only means of individual (or collective transport). Like with the Amby, its origins lie in British car manufacture; the 1967 Hillman Hunter, to be precise. The Hunter was not in any way a remarkable car, but it was quite successful sales-wise. Moreover, it was spread among various brands (Hillman, Chrysler, Sunbeam) and markets (UK, Europe, US, New Zealand, Australia). However, nowhere did it become more important than in Iran. To be sure, it was an atrocious heap: unsafe, dirty and with a fuel consumption so impressive that even oil-selling Iran paid its manufacurer to end production in 2005. However, that did not rid us of the Paykan. Production continues in Khartoum in Sudan, and those who crave to drive something that will never achieve more than 15 mpg may still realise their dream.
(read more)There's always someone who ruins your photograph ...
Photoshoot in Museum Martena, Franeker
When science gets scary...
Is it father time? Is it father Abraham (Dutch people will understand)? Is it an evil gnome? No, it's the American Museum of Natural History's Darwin Doll!
(read more)Banking talent
Warning of an exodus of bankers, Stuart Frazer said it might just be like the footballer's market, with the greates talent fleeing abroad. It's a perfect analogy, assuming the footballers in question have each a hat trick of own goals, got their team relegated and caused the entire stadium to collapse.From Have I Got News for You. (read more)
Keeping promises is tricky
From the fantastic Informationisbeautiful.net, which gives a host of information on Haitian relief aid.
(read more)2010's VHS: Apple's iPad
At the moment, Apple is a magnificently successful company – so much so that many Apple enthusiasts of yore begin to feel out of touch with it (you may include me) and its policies. However, the introduction of the iPad should make us realise that in its past, Apple has also seen some spectacular failures. I refer (of course) to the ill-born Apple III, the Lisa and some other stuff. Being a front-runner entails risk, but not consistently thinking products through can turn risk into assured failure. The Lisa flaundered on cost, the Apple III was intentionally crippled not to make it a competitor to Apple's own IIe, etc.
The same thing is threatening to happen to the iPad. In the last week, many have already commented on the device. Generally, opinion has been sceptical, the general feeling being that it is a great product which may see commercial failure (see, for instance, ). Others (such as Peter Kirn at CreativeMusic) are concerned with Apple's business models - concerns, by the way, that I share.
Apple has so much momentum at the moment that I can't really see the iPad flaundering, at least not initially. The lines of the inane curious will probably be there when the device starts to sell. But the fundamental problem is that for the tasks Apple sees it perform, the iPad isn't such a great device at all. Sure, it's pretty, and it will offer a very good user experience. But as a supplement to the iPhone and an e-reader, it has some serious drawbacks.
First, the iPad won't have multitasking. Macs have had multitasking (remember the Multifinder?) since 1988. Sure, it was clunky at that time, but Apple needed to implement it because the user community was clamoring for it. When you're writing, you need your dictionary application, your thesaurus or simply Wikipedia as well; when you're doing desktop publishing, you want Photoshop open to edit your images, etc. On the iPod, the lack of multitasking is irritating but not a deal-breaker, partly because the size of the screen makes using lots of applications at the same time problematic, but also because it is not designed to work on for very long. iPhone apps are geared to simple, ad-hoc tasks, such as checking your train tables or calendar. The iPad is positioned along to netbooks, however, and that does change the equation somewhat. Even the most indolent netbook will allow you to have multiple tasks open at the same time, and in today's world, you need it. Secondly, e-readers have come a long way recently, and the iPad isn't a very good one. Anyone praising the iPad as an e-reader for its backlit screen doesn’t understand how reading works and the *reason* why e-readers need external lighting. Looking at a source of light is infinitely less comfortable on the eye than looking something that doesn’t distribute light. It is why reading a paper book is still so much more physically comfortable than looking at a paper screen. It allows you to use a Kindle for hours on end. Also, not having an matte screen cover doesn’t help. Ever tried working on a glare-screen laptop outside with even a modicum of sunshine? In the days of video, Betamax was universally held to be of superior quality to VHS. However, VHS became the standard because of industry support. E-ink technology isn't perfect, sure, but it is heading in the right direction. I would hate it if the advances made in e-reader technology were to be thrown overboard through the muscle of a dominant industry player. So we're left with a not very suitable e-reader and a consumer device that you can't use for that many tasks. Couple that with Apple's totalitarian approach to the market and you end up with a world in which .. Apple will probably even out the device's shortcomings by version two, but I'm left with the feeling that at them moment, it looks like a major step in the wrong direction. (read more)Winter scenes
One snowflake and the country comes to a grinding halt. However, living next to the sea we don't quite get hit by the weather quite so badly as certain other parts of the country - and we see more of the fun. Enjoy!
(read more)The power of words
For my Ph.D. thing, I used Wordle today, just to see where the emphasis was, and to make sure I didn't over-use certain words. Wordle is a great (and free) tool, that allows you to create word clouds where often-used words are indicated by greater size. Apart form making pretty pictures, they can be pretty useful as well. In all, I wasn't too unhappy with the result, although I could make do with a few less 'also''s.
I performed the same exercise on this blog, and the results were a bit more disconcerting. Apparently, I'm far too concerned with Word, and the alarming thing is that over the coming few posts that will be even more the case. However, I'm not quite sure whether it just takes the first page or penetrates to the deeper levels of the blog (I rather suspect the former, to be honest).
Just to be complete, here's the result from my other blog:
Standing out
I've had some problems with Apple's new design approach for some time. Remember the first G3 iBook? Of course you do.
An ode to Friedrichstraße Station
There are buildings that are overwhelming in their general splendour, and there are those that move you by their detail. Because of the latter, I consider Berlin's Friedrichstraße station to be one of the most beautiful railway buildings in Europe.
The building has had a turbulent history. Built in 1878, it quickly became too small, and in 1914 plans were drawn up to rebuild it with two additional tracks and an added shed. The result was the present building, designed by Carl Theodor Brodführer and built atop and partially around the old one in 1926. It was a very successful reconstruction and soon became a focal point for city life in Berlin's 'roaring twenties'.
Since it escaped World War II nearly unscathed, it functioned as the de facto main railway station for Berlin during the first years after the war. In GDR days, it was a terminus for trains arriving from and departing to the east, because of its location on the western rim of East Berlin. Friedrichstraße also served as the main transfer point for people travelling to and from East Berlin during the years of the Berlin Wall. The adjacent Tränenpalast>/i> or 'palace of tears' was so named for the inevitable outburst of emotion when people were separated at the border. Occasionaly in use as a cinema today, it stands as a reminder both of the Wall years and of the least fathomable excesses of GDR architecture.
The station itself is quite something, though. Because of its location, it has been built in a curve; moreover, since it stands next to the Landwehrkanal, part of it is a bridge across the water. From the street is almost disappears into surrounding buildings; from the riverside, however, it is a spectacular view.
It has recently been restored to its former splendour, at least from the outside. The inside, regrettably, has become a rather generic shopping mall, although the observant traveller can still make out the contours of the original hall. It has, however, become a difficult space to orient yourself in. The outside, however, has been lovingly restored, and it is here where one can see that which makes the station such a special building.
The outside is covered with glazed tiles and quite stern at first glance. However, as soon as you start to look more closely, all sorts of intricate little details reveal themselves, from the rosettes above the windows to the elegant tiles lining the front windows. Further away from the Friedrichstrasse the station morphs into a beautiful steel bridge. The combination is a showpiece of industrial design and actually 'feels' a lot bigger than it is.
(read more)The Great Mac Word Processor Round-up for Historians (Part 1: Introduction)
For an historian (such as myself), the word processor is still the most important creative tool. In this field, the standard is set by Microsoft’s omnipresent Word word processor, but in a number of respects this isn’t the most useful piece of kit for either the Mac user or the historian, let alone for a combination of the two. Which leads to the question I shall be trying to answer in the upcoming four or five posts: what is the best alternative to MS Word for the more-or-less serious historian?
Word for Mac is inferior to the Windows iteration in a number of ways: it is relatively large and takes up a lot of memory, it is comparatively slow and it has problems with the way the Mac handles fonts and, sometimes, documents. Of course, Word for Mac shares all the things that make Word such a nuisance to Windows users as well: its size, the fact that it imposes all sorts of features on you which you’ve never asked for (I know, you CAN switch most of it off, but why should I have to?), and that formatting any decent-sized document consistently is a real pain. Word tries to be all things to everyone, but in doing so it often fails to be specifically useful to specific groups. In the real world, the problem is that with ninety-something percent of the world is using nothing else but Word; document compatibility is therefore a feature crucial to the success of any alternative program. But there is demand for alternatives, as I’m constantly reminded of when talking to colleagues or other scientists. A while back I wrote an overview of Mac web browsers, and subsequently some requests came my way that suggested I do the same with word processors. For that reason, here is my Great Mac Word Processor Round-up for Historians™. Because my opinion is only one of many, I asked Gerben Zaagsma (who’s done more actual historical writing than I have) to add his 2 cents in the form of a commentary with every section.Criteria
We won’t be treating MS Word, since that is the default choice. However, Word’s features will be considered as received knowledge since they co-determine the yardstick by which its alternatives are measured. Some other criteria are:
- Document formatting: using headers, footers and sub-headers; footnotes and endnotes
- Bibliographical integration. There are some great reference managers for Mac around, such as Bookends, Sente, Endnote and RefWorks. Proper integration of these into a word processor can save a lot of time and hassle when adding footnotes or completing your bibliography.
- Handling of images and other media. Gone are the days that we only wrote 800-page treatises with footnotes that made up three-quarters of the page; we want pictures! Also, some genres of history-writing heavily depend on the use of graphical data: art history, of course, but also economic or statistical history. How the wordprocessor handles these can be important. In given cases, the additions of other media, such as audio or movies, can be too.
- Purchase, licensing, and support. One of the major qualms with Microsoft has been its adoption of annual license fees for corporate use, rather than regular purchase prices. Experiences of this kind can be instrumental in the way you experience your product. Support (by which I mean the quality of the manual as well as forms of after-sales support) determines to a large degree how successful you’ll be in getting the most out of your word processor. But pre-purchase options can help as well: being able to test-drive your application before you buy it can help you assess it usefulness as a professional tool.
- Interface. Word processors are almost always complicated applications. Being able to find your way around and adapt features to your demands largely determines how useful the application will be to you.
- Unique selling points. Word processors share 95% or thereabouts of their features; they’re about typing and editing texts, after all. But all of them have added some things of their own; if they’re useful, they can give a product just the edge over its competition. An important one is the ability to track changes made by several contributors. But as this can be done by other means as well, I haven’t it included it in the criterions for inclusion in this review.
Which ones?
Of the plethora of word processors currently on the market, I’ll be discussing a wide selection, but one which is aimed at use in our field (i.e., history). As a criterion for inclusion I’ve decided that the programs need to be able to at least:
- use footnotes and/or endnotes
- use style formatting
- possess a decently-implemented way of dealing with MS Word documents
- handle images
Which leaves me with the following candidates:
- Apple Pages (part of the iWork suite)
- Mellel
- Nisus Writer Pro
- Scrivener
- Ulysses
- OpenOffice.org 3
- NeoOffice 3.0.1
- Mariner Write
- Papyrus
- RagTime
- WriteRoom
- Google Dox (online)
- Buzzword (part of Adobe’s Acrobat.com; online)
- Zoho Writer (part of Zoho)
There are many more tools for text processing on a Mac, but a lot of them are aimed at creative writing (e.g., Final Draft, Avenir, CopyWrite, to name a few) and don’t support things such as footnotes. Others, such as Smultron, Textwrangler or BBedit, are more geared towards technical application, such as text editing. An honourable mention goes out to the nifty little Bean. Built on top of Apple’s own Textedit, it adds some useful extra features, is free, very small and fast. No formatting or footnotes, though.
What's to be tested?
Well, whether I like it, of course. But apart from that, I will try to objectivise the test somewhat. MS Word compatibility will be tested by using this file, which contains loads of formatting and footnotes. I'll import and export it and compare it to the original. Furthermore, I'm focusing on the products' usefulness to the specific demands of the scientific writer.
The one that got away: LaTeX.
Ah, yes. TeX. This is the domain of zealots. LaTex is not so much a program as a way of formatting scientific texts. It allows you to ‘code’ a text, much like the way you use HTML to code web pages. The advantages and disadvantages are also similar: it is very easy to work consistently, but very hard to go beyond what the system was set up for.
There are some good introductions on the web for those of you who want to get started using TeX on a Mac, and there are some decent applications that allow you to do it, but I won’t treat them here. Some reasons: no document complatibility with anything whatsoever, few possibilities of using different forms of type properly and insufficient tools to integrate graphics. And sorry, but I can’t be bothered with a word processing tool that requires learning an entirely new formatting language. I’ll leave this one to the mathematicians, who tell me it’s brilliant. Good for them.Soon to follow: Mellel and Apple Pages.
(read more)
It's a steal...
That must be some meaning of the word 'just' I was previously unaware of. As in synonymous to 'the whopping amount of'.
One more thing to show that iPhones just aren't cool anymore. That's not just because I gave up on them, but mainly so, yes. (read more)Phoenix Report, Day One: Styrofoam
Because it wasn't such a nice place to live in?
I don't know what was most disconcerting about yesterday's remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. It might have been the fact that everyone appeared to have made the same documentary, which gave the televised evening a very repetitive feel. Or it might have been the way in which Angela Merkel managed to convey absolutely nothing of the joy of twenty years ago. But most likely it was the almost reverent way in which the ARD played host to former SED Politburo member Siegfried Lorenz.
That was just plain weird. For some reason, the GDR has gained the image of a fluffy bunny among dictatorships, more of a forty-year variety act than something to be really afraid of. The people living in it might have disagreed, mind you. If you were permanently watched, had hardly any freedom of movement, were forced to sing those godawful songs every now and then and hadn't eaten a banana since the beginning of time, you might just have been slightly scoffed at the way in which the former suppressors were treated by the media. There was a reason why everyone wanted to get out. Imagine Hitler reminiscing about those good old Holocaust days on Israeli television. A different scale of crime, I know, but the image did cross my mind. And if we're not going to remember the crime, why remember its end? (read more)The joy of good design
Or in this case, a five-fold Rozetsku power plug extension produced by Art Lebedev.
Source: Engadget
(read more)Motivating the urban cyclist
An interesting post today on the Bicycle Design Blog from Batavus bike designer Eric Kamphof; and while I don't go along entirely with some of his analysis, it is good to have an extended exposé about the choices facing modern bicycle designers, and the increasing differentiation of their market.
(read more)Customer feedback
To:
Staatliche Museen in Berlin
Visitor Service
Working on it...
From the web site of the new Neues Museum in Berlin. Really proud of their new building, they are. But getting an architect to stop building is not always easy, it seems...
Edit: but then, maybe it's an installation ...?...
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